My Honest Thoughts on Indie Publishers

Publishers screw you over. They are why games don't go to Gog. If publisher smells no DRM platform they fuck off. IMO I should also launch my first game on Gog just because I'm not pro DRM(and steam is DRM).
Steam doesn't let you sell for better price elsewhere but they don't stop you.

Steam: You can literally publish your own game
Devs: I need a publisher because I'm a developer

Thank you for saying this, it's really helpful! I was stressing about getting funding, but money will come if the game is good.

I don't need to watch the video, I just look at the thumbnail

u have so many locks on that door😂

A lot of people confuse publishers with QA. A lot of people need quality control, not a publisher. And sure, a publisher may give you some help improving quality by saying "no we can't publish this buggy mess", or even give access to their QA team, but you shouldn't give away half your game for it.

Make a QA form and get some strangers to fill it in. Compensate them however you can, so they take it seriously. If you spent years on your game, you are too biased to look at it objectively and probably so are your friends and family.

Love the snoop dog poster in the background

Ah, so that's why the door is locked. To keep the publishers out

Since you mentioned it in this video, voice acting seems a really undercovered topic online, and I think having someone with your experience talk about it would really be amazing for other indie devs. Do you have any plan to?

As someone who worked with a big publisher, I think funding is the only good solid reason. Consoles are a great plus for reasons mentioned in the video. The rest they are worthless, specially for marketing

This whole topic really reminds me of the current situation in Web Development, commonly referred to as "Learned Helplessness".

Basically, it has two components:

1. You have a huge percentage of "devs" who, for the lack of better word, just suck at programming. Most of them self-taught from a garbage $500 course and a few YT tutorials, or bootcamps which are typically even worse.
Then, after wasting a thousand hours learning in the most garbage way possible and copying a few TODO apps from tutorials and listing them as personal projects, they decide they finally "know enough", spam their resume, and just due to their number, some of them get jobs.

2. Mega corporations (and smaller opportunists) create services which offer "reliability" and "convenience", but the open secret is all those services have simple, well documented and usually even easier to use open source alternatives - in fact, those services are often just wrappers around those open source products.
The real open secret here is that the only real problem they're solving is incompetence - and it works, because the whole corporate machine (and the course / bootcamp ecosystems) work tirelessly to produce new incompetent people who call themselves "developers", and for every company that leaves their garbage, there are ten other companies who simply can't afford to, partly due to vendor lock, but largely due to lack of competent employees.

All this is to say the publisher situation in gamedev somehow reminds me of this, even though the way we got here is slightly different.
There are still people on Reddit and other places putting publishers on a pedestal, as if 95% of them aren't worthless parasites who demand a ton, and don't even offer enough value to offset the time it'd take you to read their 30 page contract.

Good on you for making this video.

Helldivers dev loose IP (Magicka) because of contract

I had a publisher reach out to me, but after carefully going over their contract, outside of asking for a whopping 30% rev share, they wanted to own my game if we missed due dates. There were a lot of predatory dealings in their contract. Mind you, this is my first time making a game. I've got a team to look out for, too. Indies, READ YOUR CONTRACTS!

"publishers" are middle-men. Managed a record label for 10+ years, and worked as a designer for a newspaper publisher for around 12. Not a SINGLE thing either one does is special in any way.

You are 100% correct, my good sir.
This entire industry is COMPLETELY ad-hoc.
Not a single game designer can answer the question, "What is a game?"
At least, until now...

cant even say anything funny just thanks

Steam and other game platforms are the real publishers, the rest are just middlemеn.

"Games are more expensive than ever to make! Game development is really really hard!"
one of the only industries where a literal highschooler can make and sell a product 100% for free in their bedroom and potentially make millions of dollars

I work for a niche publisher with a good reputation and we've worked with a big publisher too! And I agree 100%. But there are a few publishers who know what they're doing, like Hooded Horse to name one.

It is very rare that a game is improved by a publisher and very often a game is made worse by a publisher

I tried to get a publisher for my first commercial game. Looking back, even if I somehow did get one, it wouldn't have made much of a difference because the game wasn't that great. In short, this video is correct and based.

How much for Choo Choo Charles IP?

People misunderstand what publishing is for.

It's a different studio business model - publishers should pay you to make your game. Even if your game sells 0 copies, you still make some margin on milestone payments.

It's about giving up some of the upside to de-risk development. You pass the financial risk from yourself to them.

If the publisher isn't paying for development, you're not getting the main benefit of having a publisher.

When it comes to testing, I think the issue for some people might not have a big enough network

For professional game devs a good usage of publishers (including indie publishers) is just reducing risk. Publishers should not just be funding your game--you should be baking a profit into your deal. The deal, at minimum, should fund this game + some of the funding for whatever you might make next. Or if you estimate your game is gonna make 1 mil then make sure you are getting a guaranteed 800k-1.1mil upfront + revshare. The goal is to reduce your risk and shift it to the publisher. Getting a publishing deal is really a negotiation about sharing risk. It should be up to the publisher to generate value above and beyond the existing perceived value. If you want to take on all the risk and gain all the potential reward then dont work with a publisher. But if you'd rather a guaranteed future based on your negotiating position then that's a good situation where a publisher deal makes sense.

But you need to negotiate a good deal! And if your game is bad you cant do that so a lot of the thoughts in this video do still apply.

As a thought experiment (or a challenge), create a sustainable, ethical and profitable business model to replace the existing "Indie Publisher" model... And then make a video explaining how it would work. Put the idea out into the universe, maybe it will change the world.... (side note, love the content... will be watching more of these long form videos, thanks!)

Fiverr is a good place to get playtesters too.

This is a sad reality I had to face with my game. I did everything I could to get it visibility; devlogs, social media posts, steam next fest and reaching out to almost 20 publishers. I only ended up with like 2400 wishlists. Over a period of 3 years I finally realize that my product is just not good enough. It makes me sad but It's better to face the truth now and learn from it.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE LEGAL PART? IP AND SUCH THINGS?

Yall be careful with these "companies" that holds your game tests... most of them be selling your keys, you might get in trouble, test with people of your community!

Thanks for sharing your insight. Gold mine of info.

100% this

You are right, but there are developers who just don't want to mess with that stuff.

You say doing X or Y is easy, well, it depends on the person. Maybe it's easy for you and maybe it's hard for someone who just wants to make a game and not have to do all the other things. I have spoken to a couple of devs who made huge hits and they said they could have gone without publishers, but they just didn't want to mess with things they didn't like doing - even if it meant giving away a huge chunk (million+ in one case I know). Some people are just more technical, for example, porting to consoles was a breeze for me, I would never give a publisher a cut for doing that. Just like you feel that marketing is easy and porting is hard, for me porting is easy and marketing is hard. I had a publisher for one of my 9 games and I don't regret it one bit.

Now, if you already made a successful game and you have the money to fund the next one, then you can skip the publisher and directly hire people to do all the stuff you don't like doing. But for someone making their first game, there's so much to think about. Having someone just take over and handle a lot of those is great help.

It really depends on each particular developer. There's no hard and fast rule.

How do you feel about using AI to translate languages?

Dude you’re absolutely correct. The more I learned about publishers after I released my first game, the happier I am that I never thought about touching them hahaha.

what kinda experience did you have with your previous games before charles. I see you got the same publisher for 2 previous games. Did they have any upsides for them being there?

ChatGPT can give you a decent translation. Google Translate can do a good job too. ChatGPT can do better if you already know about the target language and you just want to make it better (it would need more work). So, you don't need to spend money.

What do you think about translations made with AI?

The core problem here is people, again, thinking that there is SOMEONE out there who 'just' knows, someone who can 'just' do it succesfully. And they're not entirely wrong but holy hell is their sentiment's intensity off base.

It's not actually possible to 'hate marketing' as an indie lol. You are LITERALLY just showing off your game. Straight up. You do that with your close friends anyway.

So, what I'm hearing is that Publishers are literally just middle-men for ignorant devs.

I think you miss that most of the competent people who look for publishers are simply looking for funding to live fot the next few years or so. They simply don't have the CHOICE to not have money until the game comes out. Same with translation: of course all the publisher does is give the money and contact a translation studio. But the thing is, most developpers actually DON'T have 15k they can spend out of their pockets to have simultaneous multi-language releases.
Some of the arguments in the video are good, and everyone agrees that publishers take a cut that is way too big and not sustainable for our industry. But In think you missed the biggest point of going to a publisher : get funding !

I feel like you've convinced me. I thought that indie publishing was kinda sketch, but it really comes down to the lack of garunteed returns. It's scary, but it seems like self publishing is more accessible than it has ever been before.

Bro why is your door deadbolted lmao

As a gamer who thinks a LOT about product and service design, delivery, marketing and sales systems, etc. this is one industry that's always had me scratching my head. I could not for the life of me figure out what publishers ever do that the development people can't do with at least 80% accuracy. Every time I look at a game on steam I find myself glad to see games developed and published by the same company or companies under the same conglomerate.

What are your thoughts on Steam then ? They take 30% of your revenue just so you can put your game in display. Do you think your game could be successful without being present on Steam ?

Why not just go to the porter and give them a percentage of sales?

Santy finna come down dat chimney with a publishing deal 😎

if you are a noob at game dev and a publisher offers you a deal, yeah you're gonna waste the money, but now you got to use other people's money to figure out what not to do next time, you should MAYBE take it if it lets you be full time instead of BS desk work.

NEVER TAKE AN ADVANCE WITH RECOUP, NEVER GIVE UP YOUR IP. DONT SIGN A THING WITHOUT A LAWYER IN YOUR CORNER

ps, my bf said you look like the chihuahua a little bit